The present invention relates to the control of remotely operated vehicles, and more particularly to intuitive control for a remotely operated vehicle which maximizes sensor employment.
There is an increased emphasis on the use of unmanned air vehicles (UAV) for performing various activities in both civilian and military situations where the use of manned flight vehicles may not be appropriate. Such missions include surveillance, reconnaissance, target acquisition, target designation, data acquisition, communications relay, decoy, jamming, harassment, ordinance delivery, or supply.
Similarly, it has long been the practice of remotely controlling weapons such as a torpedo or anti-tank missile for ordinance delivery. Such control may take place when the weapon is beyond the visual line of sight of the operator.
The primary objective of a UAV operator is to position the UAV such that its payload (typically a sensor turret of some type) is pointed at the area of interest. Controlling the UAV beyond visual line of sight requires the use of moving icons on a map display and/or control through on-board imagery displayed in the base station. This may be even more difficult than controlling the UAV visually as the operator must mentally consider the UAV orientation to ensure the correct control input is provided.
Most map displays are not fixed. That is, the map display may be rotated such that north is not always facing up. The operator must then consider both the UAV orientation and the map orientation. In like manner, controlling the air vehicle by xe2x80x9cflying it through its camera,xe2x80x9d i.e., controlling the UAV via the imagery from its on-board sensor, requires the operator to take into account the sensor LOS in order to determine the correct control input. This may further complicate control as the sensor turret may not coincide with the UAV heading.
Existing methods for controlling UAVs rely greatly on operator skill. With a considerable amount of training, an operator can learn to operate a UAV proficiently. However, under high workload and stress conditions, such as when the UAV is controlled from a cockpit of manned aircraft, the non-intuitive control of a UAV having many variable references may result in undesirable operational effectiveness of the UAV.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a control system for a UAV which does not require an operator to consider the relationship of UAV orientation, Map orientation and the UAV sensor orientation to thereby minimize training requirements and provides maximum operational employment of the UAV payload.
The present invention provides a control system for a UAV including translations which translate remote control commands to maximize operational employment of the UAV payload. Without these translations, an operator must mentally calculate the necessary control stick inputs to move the UAV toward a desired position seen on the map or on the sensor imagery. By first determining the operator""s spatial reference, and then using the reference to transform the control stick commands, the operator treats the UAV as a point source.
For control through onboard mission sensor imagery, the transformations of the present invention removes the operator from control of the UAV by commanding the UAV to move itself to achieve the desired payload orientation. This permits a novice operator, with little knowledge of flight control operations, to fly the UAV remotely, beyond visual line of sight. This capability is especially beneficial for an operator in a high workload environment such as from the cockpit of a manned vehicle.